Source:
http://www.rightcrazy.com/?p=522
So Much For Little Miss Innocent
Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised by this. At all.
I may have been a little hesitant at first — and there were plenty of people emailing in to call me on it — but after the early revelations, my mind got changed in a hurry and what we have here now should surprise absolutely no one. I’ve gotten quite a few emails speculating about just how the murders of the Richardson family in Medicine hat were carried out, and most of them shared a common theory: Steinke killed the parents and Jasmine killed her 8-year old brother herself.
Well, so much for that being a wild theory:
MEDICINE HAT, Alta. - A 13-year-old girl accused of killing a Medicine Hat family broke down twice on the witness stand yesterday while admitting to stabbing an eight-year-old boy who was begging for his life.
Speaking in a barely audible voice, she admitted to stabbing eight-year-old Jacob Richardson in the upper part of his body.
“I’m scared, I’m too young to die,” the girl told the court, recalling what the boy said during the April 23, 2006, massacre.
There you have it. Sweet, innocent little Jasmine Richardson stuck a knife in her little brother while he begged for his life. Of course, she’s trying to hang it all on Steinke, but that’s not the way the evidence is piling up:
After three weeks of Crown evidence about the grisly crime scene and a rebellious adolescent who hated her parents and the rules they tried to impose, Tuesday’s testimony was the first time the jury heard full details of the murderous encounter.
She was angry because her parents grounded her and took away her computer privileges in an attempt to cool her relationship with the 23-year-old Steinke. She told the jury she often “vented” to her boyfriend as they talked on the phone late at night after her family had gone to sleep and admitted she’d had several “hypothetical conversations” with him about killing her parents.
As if all this weren’t bad enough, little Jasmine isn’t ever going to be held really accountable, regardless of the verdict. Thanks to the piece-of-shit YCJA that the Shawinigan Strangler saddled us with, she can’t possibly be handed a sentence of more than 10 years. And thanks to other idiocies like statutory release, she won’t do any more than six years inside, likely living with more creature comforts while she’s in there than most of you do out in the working world. Tack onto that the fact that she’s going to get 2-for-1 credit for the “dead time” that she’s served before her final sentencing, and she’ll be back on the streets before she’s old enough to drink.
And here’s the kicker: all the social-worker/hug-a-thug shitheads out there that think the YCJA is so lovely are going to try to tell you that you have no right to know who she is!
That’s right. In the all-too-near future, Jasmine’s going to be out on the same streets as your kids. Maybe, like my boy, your kids are about Jasmine’s age. And those sanctimonious assholes have the gall to try and tell me that I can’t warn him about this future Squeaky Fromme that’s going to be prowling the streets.
Like hell I can’t. My kids and my grandkids (whenever they show up) have a right to know if there’s a murderer in their midst.
Your kids have that right, too.
Oh, yeah; last but not least:
MEDICINE HAT, Alta. - A 13-year-old girl says she showed little emotion after stabbing her terrified little brother - knowing her parents were also dead - because the enormity of the act was “too big to cry about.”
Just one more thing to chew on…
Reading this article makes my stomach churn quite literally. Some people are so blatantly naive that it almost isn't worth opposing them. The most pressing, albeit least important, point I feel the need to make is that anyone following the Jasmine Richardson story can definitely not assume that all information is being publicly released - or that Jasmine is telling the whole story. She may have been an abuse victim. She may be legally insane. And if indeed she were a textbook psychopath with flawless parents - is it fair to permanently condemn a child for a thoughtless act? Everyone makes mistakes and does things they can't take back. Is it fair for any human to take the life of another, even if the victim is a killer themselves? To what extent can any person claim superiority to another?
The idea that a casual viewer of newscasts - or even an avid, obsessive follower of this murder trial - can be informed enough about any crime committed to deal death to a 12 year old is ludicrous, to begin with. Especially in a crime as heinous as this, not all information is going to be released for public perusal. And that isn't even taking into account what happened behind closed doors that Jasmine may not have revealed. Perhaps her parents abused her. Perhaps she was mentally disturbed, either from an environmental cause or a physical disability previously undiagnosed. Who is to say that she is "normal" in the commonly accepted sense of the word? Although my definition of the word may diverge from the mainstream, I wouldn't consider having the gall to murder my parents and kid brother to be a "normal" endowment. She either had to have extreme motive - i.e. more than being grounded off of the computer - or serious psychological issues. And if she was a victim of abuse, or psychologically disturbed, I don't think it is fair to judge her on the same plane as a "sane" murderer, even without taking into account the fact that she
is 12 years old.
12 years old, while it may be still considered adolescence, remains a year of confusion where a child depends deeply upon their parents and other adult influences in their lives. One must keep in mind that the average "troubled teen" does not go so far as to murder their family. Wh
y was Jasmine driven so far? Why did no one realize she needed help, or make any attempt to get some for her? There is no reason she ever should have had the idea to kill her family cross her mind - much less should she have actually done it. So where were her parents? Where were her teachers? Children don't raise themselves.
Being a child, Jasmine was still at a stage in her life where she would regularly act without thinking about the consequences of what she does. Whether it is betraying a friend by telling a secret, spilling a drink on the living room carpet, or being rough with a sibling, rarely do adolescents really understand what they are doing and what will come of it, or they wouldn't do what they do. If Teenager A honestly understood what Teenager B would feel and think when Teenager A began an embarrassing rumour about her, Teenager A would never start the rumour. Jasmine couldn't possibly have understood the extent of what she was doing. Imagine being her, just for a moment: and in this single moment your entire life changes, because in this one moment the knife in your hand sinks into the flesh of your little brother, and he's dead. This infinitesimal movement of your hand has changed your entire life and your entire person, FOREVER. And there is no going back. I don't think it's possible for anyone to understand the magnitude of such a thing until they've experienced it firsthand - especially not a young girl who's hardly hit puberty.
It seems to me like the people most opposed to Jasmine Richardson are the people who understand her and the kind of situation she is involved in the least. The simple fact that the author of the posted article evidently fails to comprehend what it means for something to be 'too big to cry about' is testimony to his/her small-mindedness and limited understanding of difficult situations. If she
had cried immediately after these murders, that would have indicated to me there being something much more wrong with her than not. Ever heard of shock? The significance of what she had done couldn't possibly have hit her so quickly. In some situations, it takes years.
In the end, the question returns to what it is she "deserves". Getting past the fact that I don't believe any human has superiority over another - i.e. the right to incarcerate/kill another, I find it appalling to have anyone suggest capital punishment. In any situation, what right does one person or even society as a whole have over another's life? Even if the proposed victim is a killer themselves, is it really justice to take an additional life? Doing so is an act equal to the original murder, because no human can truly measure the worth of any life.
Every person is equal, regardless of what they do or say. I believe that Jasmine Richardson has every right to walk this earth, and she
deserves help so that she can heal from what she did and from what drove her to do it - not condemnation from such an ignorant, self-interested society.
